Daniel

A good point! While coins were the most trusted money, bank notes were increasingly important as the 18th century wore on, and for the colonies, starved of coin by the Navigation Acts, bank notes and suchlike negotiable instruments were particularly important, as well as pieces of eight and other foreign coins. While I don't know of any specific cases where pirates stole banknotes, in my Commercial Paper class last year we talked about the 1758 case of Miller v. Race, which dealt with a thief stealing a note. When a thief steals a note and uses it as money to pay a debt, the person who receives it is a "holder in due course" and has a legal right to possession of the note and to demand payment from the note's drawer (i.e. the person who wrote the note). Thus, a pirate or any other thief who steals a bank note, or any other negotiable instrument, has an excellent chance of spending it, because the seller who takes the note has no obligation to check how the buyer came into possession of the note. This was essential to ensure that notes could circulate freely as money; if merchants always had to check everybody's title to a note, sometimes back through a dozen or a hundred people between himself and the original drawer, nobody would ever have accepted notes in place of coin. By the way, Miller v. Race was written by good old Lord Mansfield again.

Away, haul away! We'll haul away for Diosa!

Solving for the Unknown By Daniel R. Baker “Hello, Dr. Shaheed. Do you know that this is about?” Jason James said to his archaeology teacher. Even though he was Melinda Shaheed, Ph.D.’s star pupil, and even though her tigress eyes and shining black hair made his very blood ache, Jason had never had the nerve to call her Melinda. “Jason!” Shaheed glanced over and flashed a pearly smile that inflicted physical pain inside Jason’s chest. “Please, sit down. No, our distinguished department head hasn’t seen fit to tell lesser mortals what’s going on. In fact, he doesn’t seem to have invited any of the faculty but me. I hope I won’t have wasted your time asking you to come.” A glance around the lecture hall confirmed Shaheed’s words. There were only about twelve people beside himself and his professor, and of those he recognized only the president of the University of Trinidad and the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Dressed in jeans and a polo shirt, Jason felt acutely out of place among all the business suits. Presently, Dr. Gustave Elbert, head of the University of Trinidad’s Archaeology Department, entered the room. Jason knew that Shaheed’s doctoral dissertation had demolished the thesis of Elbert’s world-famous book on pre-Colombian religious cults and raised serious doubts about Elbert’s academic honesty and competence. Elbert had never forgiven her. Elbert introduced himself and the members of the audience, most of whom were wealthy investors, corporate board members, and college regents. He identified Shaheed last. “But, I suppose you are all wondering why I’ve called you here,” Elbert said, Shaheed rolling her eyes at the pompous platitude. “I have identified the location of Scar-Hand’s treasure.” Elbert raised the remote in his hand. The lecture hall’s PowerPoint projector displayed an oil portrait of a long-haired man in 18th-century costume, balancing a long flintlock musket across his knee. “This is John Evesham, popularly known as Captain Scar-Hand,” Elbert declared. “Formerly the captain of Queen Anne’s ship of the line Hermione, he is believed to have turned to piracy in 1716, after his lover Susanna Inglehall committed suicide in the wake of his slaying of her father William in a duel. The permanent deformation of his right hand led to his nickname and is believed to have been inflicted by William Inglehall’s pistol. Scar-Hand sacked an estimated fifty ships over the next seven years and ransomed several prisoners. “The Royal West India Company having placed a bounty of £10,000 on his head, Scar-Hand was betrayed to the governor of Trinidad by his ship’s surgeon. Scar-Hand was hanged by order of Port-of-Spain’s Court of Vice-Admiralty on September 10, 1723. Although tortured repeatedly, he never divulged the location of his treasure, which, judging by the losses reported to Lloyd’s of London, probably totaled £30 million.” Shaheed whispered in Jason’s ear. “That number’s unlikely. Scar-Hand’s share of the total would have been only half a million or so.” Still, she appeared fascinated by Elbert’s talk. Elbert went on. “The location of Scar-Hand’s treasure has remained mysterious since 1723. Most recently, Dr. Melinda Shaheed has argued in the American Journal of Maritime Archeology that Scar-Hand threw his plunder overboard somewhere off Trinidad’s east shore while trying to evade capture, and that thesis has remained the most commonly accepted to date. However, I now have proof that Scar-Hand’s loot was not lost at sea, but is buried in Savannah, Georgia.” Elbert turned to a new PowerPoint slide. “These are Scar-Hand’s bones, now preserved here in the University of Trinidad’s Museum of Archaeology. For the past eight months, I have been studying samples from the bones, using my latest breakthroughs in auric radiometric dating.” Jason clenched his teeth. Jason himself had developed the latest auric radiometric methods, under his teacher Melinda Shaheed’s direction. It was so typical of Elbert to steal the credit for others’ work. “. . . and thus,” Elbert was saying, “at the time of the subject’s death, calcified carbonates cease to accumulate around the gold microparticles imbedded in the bone. Therefore, I can determine, almost to the day, how many years before the subject’s death that he was in physical contact with a given quantity of gold. The calculations are fairly complex, but I have computerized the process. Elbert clicked his remote and a new slide came up showing a series of equations. “In the case of Scar-Hand’s bones, the auric radiometric process reveals that he handled more than 10 kilograms of gold some time before his death. The exact figure is represented in the last equation on this line, y2+297y-900=0, where y is the number of years before the subject’s death that he last touched 10kg or more of gold at a time. From this equation, I can state categorically that Scar-Hand last handled his treasure horde exactly three years before his death – no more, no less. Scar-Hand parted with his gold on September 10, 1720. “From there, it was a simple matter of research in the Georgia State Archives to prove that Scar-Hand was in Baylward’s Countinghouse in Savannah on September 10, 1720, hiding from royal agents. He must have spent the day burying his treasure beneath the floorboards of Baylward’s Countinghouse.” Another click, another PowerPoint slide, this time showing a stock prospectus. “Gentlemen, this is the prospectus of the Elbert Prospecting Corporation. The corporate mission is to buy the property of the Savannah Regional Savings & Loan, which stands on the site of Baylward’s Countinghouse, and excavate for Scar-Hand’s plunder. Bidding for the initial stock offering of 100,000 shares will start at $10 per share. What are your questions?” The audience all started talking at once, Elbert calling them by turns. Jason looked over at Dr. Shaheed. She was oblivious to him, intensely working the keypad of her palm computer. So he raised his hand himself. Only when the flow of questions from the investors and regents had stopped did Elbert call on him. “Yes,” said the archaeology department head. “You, in the jeans and polo shirt.” “Professor Elbert,” Jason said, “if you read that article by Dr. Shaheed you mentioned, then you know she went over the site of Baylward’s Countinghouse with metal detectors repeatedly. There was no metal found.” Elbert shrugged. “It must have been buried too deep. Conventional metal detectors can only penetrate a few centimeters of loam per kilogram metal.” Jason exhaled through gritted teeth. “Halford’s expedition excavated the site in 1954, before the savings and loan was built. That’s in Dr. Shaheed’s article too. Halford found no treasure.” “Halford only excavated 36 square meters before his money ran out,” Elbert snapped. “The whole site covers more than 200 square meters. We will do it properly this time. In any case, the auric radiometric method has been tested and proven to a high level of precision. There is no possibility of error.” Jason had no answer for that. The auric radiometric method was that precise. He knew that; he had developed and tested it himself. He felt Dr. Shaheed’s hand on his arm. Her touch was gentle, but it sent fire racing through his bones. He looked over at her, and she shook her head at him slightly. Jason lapsed into silence, his heart sinking. Fifteen minutes later, as Jason was leaving the lecture hall for his dorm, Dr. Shaheed ran up to him. She leaned close to his face, and as her eyes bored into his, he had to struggle to focus on the whisper she directed to his ears alone. “Jason, meet me at the back door of the Archaeology Museum next Friday at 11:30 p.m., after you finish your marine lab practical. Bring scuba gear for yourself from the lab. Don’t forget the compass or the GPS, and don’t be late. Tell no one. Do you understand?” Jason nodded. “What is this about?” Shaheed shook her head. “Too risky to explain here. Just be there.” * * * Jason James felt rather silly as he lugged the haversack of scuba gear down the concrete steps to the back door of Trinidad University’s Archaeology Museum. He was going to feel even sillier if his teacher wasn’t there. He checked his palm computer. It was 11:28 pm. He reached for the back door, wondering if he should knock. The door opened toward him when he touched it. From the darkness inside, he heard Melinda Shaheed’s whispered voice. “Who’s there?” “It’s me, Jason.” “Good. Come inside.” Jason stepped through the doorway, and felt Shaheed’s hand guiding his arm. A flashlight flared into life, and Jason’s jaw dropped. Dr. Shaheed had a scuba tank and flotation jacket on her back, a face mask and snorkel pushed up onto her forehead, and a pair of swim fins tucked under her arm. Aside from that, she wore a bikini. And nothing else. Shaheed smiled, obviously amused by the effect her body had on Jason. He blushed. “This way,” she said. Jason followed his teacher through the darkened halls of the museum. In five minutes, they stood at the glass case in room 21A that held the bones of Captain Scar-Hand. “Have you thought about what day it is today, Jason?” Shaheed asked. She was smiling, her eyes bright and mocking, her usual expression when trying to tease answers out of a bright but lazy student. “Friday, September 9,” Jason said. “Which is . . . “ Shaheed made a coaxing gesture. Jason thought it over a moment, then it clicked. “Tomorrow is the anniversary of Captain Scar-Hand’s death.” “You got it,” Shaheed said. “And you and I are about to be very rich. I could have kept all Scar-Hand’s treasure for myself, but since you did most of the work on the auric radiometry dating, I thought you deserved to share it with me.” “You know where Scar-Hand’s gold is?” Jason’s breath was hushed with excitement. Shaheed shrugged slightly, which made Jason struggle to tear his attention from the curve of her shoulders. “I soon will. Probably in the next hour or two. Before dawn, certainly.” “How do you know?” “Our beloved department head told me. He just didn’t know he had. The solution was right there on his silly PowerPoint slide.” “He solved the equation wrong? The one calculating when Scar-Hand last touched the treasure?” “Oh no, he solved it right. He just forgot that every quadratic equation has two possible answers.” “Two answers . . .” Jason pulled his palm computer from his pocket and called up the equation he had entered on his notebook at Dr. Elbert’s lecture hall. He worked for a moment and looked up at Shaheed. “I don’t understand,” he said. “Elbert’s answer is the only possible answer. Scar-Hand touched the gold three years before his death. The only other solution is negative three hundred.” Shaheed dipped her head a little while keeping her eyes fixed on Jason. “Negative three hundred is the right answer.” “What? How can Scar-Hand have last touched the gold negative three hundred years before his death?” Shaheed didn’t say anything, just raised her eyebrows, as if she expected better than this from him. Jason’s voice slowed down as he thought out loud. “It’s only possible if . . .” Chills ran down his spine. “Negative three hundred years before Scar-Hand’s death means three hundred years after his death.” “Precisely,” Shaheed said, and looked at her palm computer. “Three hundred years after Scar-Hand’s death. September 10, 2023. Which comes . . .” she looked down at her palm computer, “. . . fourteen minutes and fifty-six seconds from now. I suggest you get your scuba gear on.” It was the longest fourteen minutes and fifty-six seconds of Jason’s life. Scar-Hand’s time in the torture chamber, his time awaiting the gallows, could not possibly have seemed longer. It took forever to get his scuba gear on as he fumbled with the straps and buckles. But still worse was the waiting afterward. At every creak, every squeak of a mouse, he whirled around, his heart pounding. Shaheed stood as still and mute as a statue of Venus. Finally, he heard, distant and muffled, the chime of Port-of-Spain’s old church tower ringing twelve o’clock. As the last chime faded, the bones of Scar-Hand moved. The greenish brown skeleton sat straight up with slow, inexorable power, shattering the glass that contained it. It climbed down to the floor, slowly, as if stiff after three hundred years of slumber. Without the least regard for the two humans in the room, it clacked out the archway into the next hall. Wordlessly, Jason and Dr. Shaheed followed the spectral creature. The museum’s front door simply unlocked at a touch from the thing. It paused a moment on the outer steps, tilting its empty eye sockets toward the starry sky, then turned slightly and glided down across the deserted University campus. The teacher and her student lumbered behind, struggling to keep up with the apparition under the weight of their gear. They had gone about a mile when they arrived at the dock. The creature walked to the end of the first pier and vanished into the water without a splash, still following a ruler-straight course. Jason and Shaheed hurriedly pulled their fins on and jumped into the water after it. They followd Scar-Hand’s skeleton from the surface, using their snorkels to conserve their oxygen tanks. The walking ghost did not float; it walked along the sandy bottom, and soon its pursuers were shadowing it from directly above, shining an underwater flashlight on it to keep it in sight. By Jason’s GPS calculation, they swam out a mile, then a mile and a half, before Scar-Hand reached a depth too great for them to follow from the surface. Mouthing their regulators, Jason and Shaheed kicked down into the murky green water. Deeper and deeper they followed the walking skeleton, through the coral and the schools of fish . And finally, as their air reached the 33% mark, Shaheed stopped and pointed. At the end of their flashlight’s probing finger of light, through the naked rib cage of Scar-hand’s skeleton, they saw the scattered forms of broken, rotting chests, and the faint gleam of gold.

I wrote this short story for my mother, a teacher of mathematics, who asked me to write a ghost story about numbers. I did - but of course, I couldn't resist including pirates in it too.

I'm not certain about the facts of these specific cases. But recall that one of the chief excuses offered for slavery, both in GAoP and the time you refer to, was to educate and Christianize the slaves. The law forbidding the education of slaves shows that for the majority of the slaveholders who dominated the state legislatures, this was purest hypocrisy. But some slave owners, perhaps including the ones being prosecuted here, took their duty to educate the slaves seriously - so seriously that they were willing to risk legal punishment. Education and Christianization, of course, went hand in hand; a Christian (or at least a Protestant Christian) was supposed to read the Bible. I agree that it is not obvious whether educating the slaves was pro-slavery, anti-slavery, or neither. One might educate a slave and still intend to keep him and his progeny enslaved, or one might intend to liberate them once they were deemed ready. And by the 1850s, liberation wasn't necessarily easy, as more and more Southern states outlawed the manumission of slaves as the Civil War approached.

In the early 1660s. Mansfield was Henry Morgan's mentor.

Here's a reference from Galvin's Patterns of Pillage, p. 205. "Mansfield's followers are said to have numbered six hundred men of several nationalities, speaking different languages, as among them, besides many English, there were Flemings, French, Genoese, Greeks, Levantines, Portuguese, Indians, and negroes."

Interesting picture. As I said, holding a blade in your mouth keeps your hands free while you climb. But I wonder why one would hold grenade fuses in your mouth? One Halloween, by the way, lacking an actual cutlass, I carried a machete for my pirate costume, and sometimes posed with it in my teeth while my son knocked on the doors. The thought came swiftly to my mind: one good impact to either end of this thing, and it's coming out of my mouth. A comrade's shoe or hand in the wrong place, a wave making me hit the side of the ship while I step off the gunwale of the assault boat, spinning around a line as I climb, anything like that could make me lose the weapon. The problem wouldn't be so bad with a short knife. But who wants a short knife as their primary weapon in a boarding fight?

The ruffian who clambers over the gunwale with the blade of his weapon clamped between his teeth is one of the iconic images of piracy. Obviously, there is some advantage to having both your hands free while you climb aboard another ship, but sashes and scabbards would seem to be a more practical solution than your mouth as a place to store your weapon while you climb. Is there any historical evidence of pirates (or indeed anyone in the Age of Sail) boarding an enemy ship with cutlery in their teeth? I did search the Pub, but darned if I can find any previous threads on this question.

Slavery at sea is an interesting and confusing matter. Lord Mansfield ruled in Somersett's Case that England (as opposed to the English colonies) had no slavery, and that a slave's chains basically fell from his body the moment his feet touched English soil, and that he could not be returned to slavery even if he was captured and brought back onto a ship. But that was in 1772. Was slavery really unrecognized and unenforced in England during the GAoP, as Mansfield claimed it wasn't?

No worries, Cap'n. I only wish I could have given you some help, but my six-year-old younker would have got foul of the cable. BTW, I misspelled Josephine's name above: it's Legard, not Lamaze; and I can't seem to find the edit function.

So I arrived at Hampton at noon Saturday with absolutely no clue about the tornado, and by that time there were surprisingly few signs of the destruction left. I actually didn't learn what happened until some of the performers explained why some of the presentations weren't happening on schedule. I brought my six-year-old son Brandon with me (I was so proud of him for how well he tolerated the three-hour drive). He had a blast; the festival was well provided with inflatables for him to jump around in, a merry-go-round, and he loved playing with the sand that the engineers dumped to cover the ponds in the Pirate Cove, and roughhousing with the other children in front of the Bunch of Grapes. Once Brandon found the play area in front of the Bunch of Grapes, that took up most of the rest of the evening, with me sitting and singing along with the Brigands and Clan MacCool while I watched him. And, of course, Brandon loved the fireworks. I wore my home-made pirate shirt, and a pair of khaki shorts that might have looked like slops in a dim light. Since I don't have anything remotely resembling period shoes, I just walked the whole festival barefoot (and let me tell you, those pebblestone sidewalks hurt after a while!). I was sorry to miss several of the people I saw last year: Calico Jenny had the misfortune to be scheduled at the same time as the Battle of Ocracoke re-enactment; Callenish Gunner couldn't make it; Jolly Jack Tar has moved across the country, and I only got to see Bos'n Cross and Cap'n Sterling for a couple of minutes. But I did meet several Pub members for the first time; most of all, Rory Scott and his lovely wife Kate, who were most friendly and helpful. Scott and Kate showed me where I could by slops at the Black Bear, and I splurged on a $35 pair in plain linen (yes, sad to say, that's splurging by my standards). I put them on and felt a little silly, but a lot more piratical. I also got to meet Diosa de Cancion fo the first time, and she taught my son and some other younkers how to haul on a rope and sing Haul Away Joe, a shanty I had never heard before and which I have now been singing nonstop for days. Then I met Josephine Lamaze (sp?), who told me all about doing marine archaeology on the wreck of the Quedah Merchant - yes, that Quedah Merchant - off Catalina near the Dominican Republic. Getting to see the Pride of Baltimore was a treat too, although I was sorry that the Meka II could not take part in the battle re-enactment this year; the river was too full of storm debris for her to risk setting sail. I wish I'd had the chance to go on board, but they had it roped off during the battle re-enactment. Everybody did a super job bearing up and making Hampton a real success in spite of the storm. I look forward to going again next year. Also, I hope to make it to a few other East Coast pirate events this year; at least Rockall, but perhaps Lockhouse also.

I was speaking tongue in cheek about the "nincompoop" (probably should have used a smiley). But I'm quite sincere about suggestions for how to improve it. No false modesty - I've read a hell of a lot about pirates, enough where I feel qualified to edit Wikipedia. But you and many other Pub members may well be able to improve it more than I could. You're right about the problems with a group exercise: if I'm going to go in and remove something somebody else wrote on WIkipedia, I like to have very strong proof in hand that what they wrote was wrong, and with a concept as shifting and controversial as the boundaries of the "Golden Age of Piracy," strong proof of anything is hard to come by.

I'd like to see you expand on this. What was the influence of the Yamasee War on the Golden Age? I've only found a very little bit about the Yamasee War, and it seemed to me that it helped weaken Charleston to the point where Blackbeard saw it as a good target, but I'd be curious to know if that war has any further connection to the Golden Age. And incidentally, while the Wikipedia entry on "Golden Age of Piracy" is certainly not the work of one person, the nincompoop who wrote the "three outbursts of piracy" part, as well as the historiography section which that summary is based on . . . that was me. So if y'all have any suggestions about how to make it better, I'll see if I can do something.

When I talked about parasitism, I meant on humanity in general. The benefit pirates provided to merchants was necessarily less than the detriment they inflicted on their victims, with the pirates themselves swallowing the difference. Their plundering remained a net drain on humanity. On the other hand, logwood trees that were just standing there, cattle and pigs that were running wild, and manatees swimming freely in the sea were no benefit to any human being until the pirates harvested them, so the pirates actually produced something of value, whether for themselves or for others, when they harvested them. Foxe, I agree that buccaneers and post-Spanish-Succession pirates were different kinds of pirates with different kinds of operating styles, and it does appear to me that the post-Spanish-Succession pirates were more parasitic than the buccaneers were. But did the later pirates abandon all the buccaneer hunting methods and logwood cutting? Was there not a considerable carryover from buccaneers to Roundsmen and from Roundsmen to post-Spanish Succession pirates? If so, why would they abandon their previous methods of subsistence? (One possible answer; Roundsmen and post-Spanish-Succession pirate crews were a lot smaller and needed a lot less food than the huge buccaneer crews).

In the past, I've often said that pirates were parasites, stealing the wealth and labor of others while contributing nothing in return. I've been especially prone to say that when arguing against Marxist types who like to see pirates as social revolutionaries, but who ignore the fact that their description of capitalists as exploiters is at least equally applicable to pirates. But lately, I've noticed some evidence against my position, especially from the 17th-century buccaneering period. At least for food, the most basic productive need of all, pirates could be self-sufficient. Dampier mentioned that Miskito Indians who joined the pirates could feed the whole crew just by spearing manatees. And while the average pirate lacked the Miskito's skill with the harpoon, any pirate could harvest green turtles just by turning them on their backs. The book I'm reading now, Galvin's Patterns of PIllage, seems to suggest buccaneers continued at times to hunt wild cattle and swine even aftr moving to Tortuga. Then also, pirates sometimes made their own trade goods by cutting logwood, and not just during the buccaneer period; Galvin says that Blackbeard himself may have been a logwood cutter before joining up with Hornigold. The most basic need of pirates besides food was a ship, and obviously this was usually obtained by robbery (although even then, Exquemelin mentions that some Tortugan buccaneers actually hired their ships, and of course Bonnet bought his). I have not heard of pirates building any vessel larger than a periagua. So what about pirates' other needs: vegetable food, rope and other ship's supplies, clothing, etc.? How much of that was stolen, and how much did they make or trade for? Can we say that, while the objective of piracy was always robbery of that which others had created, the lifestyle of piracy was often that of a hunter/scavenger rather than a mere robber?

One of Henry Every's crew definitely mentioned a number of "boys" on the Fancy. Exquemelin mentions boys in the buccaneer crews getting half a share because it was their duty to torch the old ship when the crew moved to a new one. John King of the Whydah was reportedly between 8 and 11 years old when he joined Bellamy's crew. Somewhere in Botting's The Pirates there is a contemporary description of a pirate issued by the authorities, maybe in Virginia, who was under 16 years old. Thus, I surmise that Roberts' rule against boys on board was the exception, not the rule, among pirates.

I'll see you at Hampton, God willing.

Patterns of Pillage: A Geography of Caribbean-Based Piracy in Spanish America, 1536-1718, by Peter R. Galvin, 1999. I never heard of it before I found it in Gelman Library yesterday. Semester's over, and I can read fun stuff again!

Interesting! I didn't know there was evidence that Julian might have been only a local pilot. There is also John Gardiner's tantalizing passing reference to Captain Kidd's quartermaster, Hendrick van der Heul as "a little black man," in Jameson, Privateering and Piracy in the Colonial Period: Illustrative Documents, p. 222. But did that mean black-haired, or black-skinned? Are there any known examples of black officers on colonial-era European or American vessels other than amongst pirates? Certainly many of them were crewmen (Crispus Attucks comes to mind).

Geoffrey Parker once described manioc as "one of the most productive and least demanding crops ever grown by man." Assuming it doesn't poison you, I guess.

Some further data: "A 4-pdr., the typical gun size on a small sloop or schooner, could fire a roundshot about 1,000 yards." Angus Konstam, Pirates: 1660-1730, p. 11. I think that means, when you elevated the 4-pounder as high as it would go and fired it with a normal charge, a splash appeared about 1,000 yards away; I would not count on much penetration if you hit something at that distance. "Case shot fired from a six-pound field piece had an effective range of 250 yards." Benerson LIttle, The Sea Rover's Practice, p.137. I think that means that an average gunner firing at crew on an open deck beyond 250 yards would more likely than not fail to disable anyone because of either a) dispersing the shot too widely to hit anyone, or b ) the shot losing too much energy to disable someone who was hit. Little also agrees with Foxe; ships' guns were normally fired point blank, making maximum range unimportant.

I found a copy of Thorndike's book on the Web, but it doesn't seem to have any illustrations of Gallows Tree Hill. Thanks for the reference, though!

Here are a couple of drawings I made recently. Any tips on improvement would be great; I don't have much experience with drawing. This one was a lot of work. I like how the lantern and the right-hand pirate turned out, but not much of anythng else. It's supposed to show Stede Bonnet and his crew drinking King James III's health on the Francis, July 31, 1718. Not an effort at any real historical incident here, just imagining what Gallows Point might have looked like from a pirate's perspective, except that the gallows here is probably too far from the shoreline for the tide to reach. I think the high key and somber tone make a nice contrast with the previous drawing.

I've been looking for that for years. Never found one yet. There's a specimen of a merchant ship's articles from an British 1835 statute, intended to be used as a model. I don't know if any ship ever actually sailed under these articles unmodified. Note that the OCR may have caused several misspellings.